From whey protein to spirulina: are superfood powders set to be as popular as the Paleo diet?

Nutrient-dense superfood powders are the height of fashion. But do they work?
And do we actually need them?

Are superfood powders the key to good health?Photo: ALAMY

By Charlotte Sinclair

8:00AM BST 14 Sep 2014

Here is what I ate for breakfast this morning: two handfuls of spinach, two sticks of celery, some Brazil nuts, walnuts, coconut flakes, half an avocado, a tablespoon of flax and pumpkin seeds, half a banana, a pear, a splash of almond milk, all topped off with a spoonful of Elle Macpherson’s Super Elixir. This supermodel-approved fairy dust contains dozens of ingredients, including barley, wheatgrass, pineapple, pomegranate, alfalfa, goji berry, beetroot, acai, maitake mushroom extract (whatever that is) and something called horsetail, which I sincerely hope isn’t actually horsetail. I also added a protein powder, a rehabilitated substance that has, of late, shaken off its image as the diet supplement of steroid-chomping weight-lifters to become the post-gym/mid-afternoon snack of choice.

This unlikely concoction was whizzed into a smoothie in a Vitamix, a premium, high-powered food processor currently accessorising the marble worktops of the fanciest kitchens in town. (The mixer is a cult in itself: I know a woman so loyal to her Vitamix, she packed it in her luggage to take on holiday.) How does all of this taste? Actually, it’s quite delicious, in a good-for-you sort of way – a bit like drinking a sweet, not unpleasant salad.

This is superfood, 2.0, the age of miracle powders. Ingredients judged to be the most nutrient-dense on the planet, freeze dried and fine milled, are being marketed to us as magic bullets, full of enzymes, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, and supposedly delivering all kinds of marvellous health benefits, from balancing hormone and blood sugar levels to aiding and preventing chronic conditions such as diabetes, cancer and dementia.

In the name of research, my kitchen has become cluttered with ziplock packages containing various forms of powders: spirulina (an “ancient blue-green algae”), wheatgrass (“bursting with chlorophyll and vitamins”) and something called maca powder (“a small Peruvian root vegetable”). Then there’s the personal trainer James Duigan’s Body Brilliance powder (a “supermodel’s secret weapon”), a vegan, protein-rich chocolate shake containing, among other things, green vegetables, raw cocoa and green tea and costing £49.95 for 300g. Elle Macpherson’s Super Elixir, which comes in a caddy that looks like a glossy scent bottle, costs £62.50 for 300g.

Elle Macpherson, who recently launched her own superfood powder called The Super Elixir (Getty)

Powders are suddenly the height of chic. My health-nut friends Instagram their morning juices and smoothies, in shades of green from pond scum to sun-bleached grass, and smugly list the superfood powders contained therein as if reeling off a list of fashion labels. The rule of thumb appears to be the more exotic and unpronounceable the ingredient, the better.

Is this the future of food? In America a powder called Soylent is billed as an alternative to three meals a day. (Those who have tried it talk about its texture rather than its taste.) A voiceover on the Soylent website says, “You can take the time you’d normally spend preparing, eating and cleaning up after meals and put that time into other areas of your life.” Which, depending on your disposition, is either wonderful or the epitome of a life not worth living. Without doubt, the era of the super-powder – the non-food food – is upon us. Witness Victoria Beckham, who takes bee pollen and boasts to Vogue of its “22 amino acids, 12 vitamins, 28 minerals”. (The same issue of Vogue also carries an advertisement for Super Elixir, with the tagline “Look stunning – all the way down to your mitochondria”.)

But do these superfood powders actually work? And do we actually need any of this stuff? According to research by University College London published earlier this year, we should be eating 10 portions of vegetables and fruit every day, not five, as per current government and NHS recommendations. The study discovered that people who consumed at least seven portions of fruit and vegetables per day were 42 per cent less likely to suffer premature death than those who ate only one portion.

The powder Soylent, billed as an alternative to three meals a day (Getty)

Vegetables were found to be more beneficial than fruit, lowering the risk of death by 16 per cent – fruit lowered it by only 4 per cent. The study’s author, Dr Oyinlola Oyebode, said, “The clear message here is that the more fruit and vegetables you eat, the less likely you are to die at any age. My advice would be however much you are eating now, eat more.”

In which case, a super-greens formula, added to a juice or smoothie, seems to make perfect sense. Eve Kalinik, a nutrition therapist, says, “Super greens like spirulina, chlorella, wheatgrass and barley grass are high in antioxidants and great sources of protein. Realistically, a busy person won’t eat 10 portions of vegetables a day. I think it’s physically impossible for us to take in the amount of minerals and vitamins we need in our diets, even by clean eating, because we’re surrounded by toxins. Most of us live in polluted cities, we have stress in our lives. Nowadays we need to have some level of supplementation. The super-green powder is a condensed, dried powder version of the food source itself, and is a far easier, more convenient way to add those vegetables to your diet.”

If you can get it down you, that is. Mixed in water by itself, a super-greens powder is rather unpalatable, giving off a distinctly earthy, fish-tank fragrance. “You can mix them in a smoothie with something sweet and hide the taste,” suggests Kalinik. I try that. It’s still awful.

Perhaps I should try harder. Spirulina contains essential vitamins and amino acids and boasts a higher iron content than spinach and more beta-carotene than carrots. It was judged to be a superior foodstuff by Nasa no less, which recommended that it be cultivated on long-term space missions. Powders can be an effective way to get a quick blast of goodness in our diets, not least protein. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, protein from fish, poultry, beans and nuts, with a limited intake of red meat and cheese, should make up a quarter of our plate, with the largest space reserved for vegetables. Combined with a growing interest in the eat-like-our-ancestors Paleo diet – a kind of caveman Atkins (yes to eggs, nuts, seeds, meat, no to grains, dairy, refined sugars, salt, junk food) – protein is having a moment.

Apparently, most of us are deficient in the stuff. Enter protein powders, sourced from soy, whey, pea, rice and hemp. The very idea of them reminds me of those health shops that sell huge tubs of the stuff with their terrifying photographs of mahogany-tanned, vein-popping body-builders. While protein powder’s current marketing is altogether softer, and directed at a different customer, the benefits remain the same: weight loss, muscle recovery, immune-system boosting.

Now whey-protein smoothies are sold at the smart boutique exercise class Barry’s Bootcamp for post-session muscle recovery. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Lara Stone (neither of whom are known for their bulging biceps) reportedly regenerate their gym-bunny bodies with James Duigan’s Body Brilliance protein powder. The case for protein is compelling. Harvard cites a 20-year study of more than 80,000 women who followed a low-carbohydrate diet high in vegetable sources of fat and healthy protein. The women experienced a 30 per cent lower risk of heart disease compared with those who ate a low-fat, high-carb diet.

Of the other powders competing to make it into our morning smoothies, matcha is Kalinik’s favourite, “because it’s a powerful antioxidant, meaning it fights the free radicals we absorb from the environment, and those we generate internally. And cacao, which is a great source of magnesium – in which most of us are deficient – and also high in antioxidants. Maca powder is good for balancing hormones, especially in menopausal women. It comes from a root – the Incas used it for stamina when they were going into battle.” (Many of these powders play heavily on their ancient origins.)

Victoria Beckham might be on to something with bee pollen. According to Katrin Hempel, a naturopath and former biomedical scientist, it is “one of nature’s most complete foods because it has such a high density of nutrients all together. The proteins are highly assimilable, so they’re easily absorbed by the body. It’s high in fibre, and has been shown to be beneficial for general blood production and for increasing white-blood-cell numbers. It’s one of the few foods that can’t be synthesised in a lab. It has to be made by bees.” Meanwhile, acai powder (pronounced “ah-sigh-ee”) is renowned for its antioxidant properties. “It has the highest antioxidant content of any food,” adds Hempel. “It catches free radicals, basically.”

Victoria Beckham is a fan of bee pollen for its amino acids, minerals and vitamins (Getty)

But apart from endless rounds of Vitamix-whizzed super-smoothies, how should we consume these non-foods? Hempel recommends sprinkling bee pollen over salads. Kalinik suggests “a nice cashew, basil and hemp-powder pesto mixed through some courgette noodles” – but cautions against going overboard. “I think people should be more targeted, not just shoving powders into things willy-nilly. They’re quite powerful, so you’ve got to know what you’re doing and for the right reasons. You can definitely over-supplement. You don’t want too many antioxidants.”

Indeed. The superfood cause was dealt a blow last year when an American scientist, James Watson, reported that overconsumption of antioxidants may have the opposite effect to that intended. “Everyone thought antioxidants were great,” he said. “But I’m saying they can prevent us from killing cancer cells.”

There are other issues too. Not least the lack of scientific studies and human-trial research on these substances, and the fact that the label “superfood” is a marketing invention, not a legal definition. These “miracle” powders are expensive, and if you have existing digestive issues you might not feel any benefits. The nutrition therapist Ian Marber says, “These are concentrated levels of nutrients in a food state, and can be absorbed quite easily. But, on the other hand, we don’t yet know if we can absorb that many nutrients, nor if we actually need them, nor if having these extraordinary amounts has a detrimental effect. The human body can only process so much at once.” He gives short shrift to the movement’s celebrity proponents. “The idea that because so-and-so takes them then somehow we’ll look the same is just silly.”

Powders can also have unexpected side effects. The nutritionist Petronella Ravenshear says, “Chlorella and other algae, including spirulina, are potent mineral chelators [binding agents], so, although they are effective for heavy-metal detoxing, they can also rid the body of minerals like zinc and magnesium, which many people are already low in. The way we evolved, living in nature, we’ve never been able to consume these concentrated things in the way we do now. I don’t believe it’s possible to get everything we need out of a really good diet, and supplements are useful. But, in a nutshell, when it comes to powders, more is not better.”

This is a strange place to find ourselves. Food is about ritual, religion, emotion, history, not just nutrition. It’s what we eat but also how we eat, why we eat and where we eat. Thinking of food in terms of isolated ingredients can miss the point of it. As the author Michael Pollen writes, a shared meal “elevates eating from a mechanical process of fuelling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture”.

It is natural to want to do the best for ourselves. Who doesn’t want to live a longer, healthier life? By all means try a super-greens powder, add some maca to your morning porridge, go crazy with your Vitamix. There are empirical benefits to these substances.

After a week of alternating between Elle Macpherson’s Super Elixir and James Duigan’s Body Brilliance my skin has never looked better. Meanwhile, another friend swears by bee pollen to ease her hay-fever symptoms. Greens are good for us. But do heed Petronella Ravenshear’s advice when she says, “Superfood powders are supplements to a healthy diet, not substitutes for a healthy diet.” In other words, woman cannot live by spirulina alone.